I told my mom that I’ve been trying to be funnier online and she kept saying things like “you know, just think up the content and the jokes will come” and “well I don’t think you should /try/ to be funny,” so it is through her subtle judgement that I come to you with a sincere VUBE entry. I can’t really stomach most sincerity right now and honestly I can’t imagine who can, so I’m going to be a little sincere, but I’ll also try to be a little self-deprecating and funny so it’s a little more palatable. If you don’t want my sincerity, even with the chasers of light jokes about my immense suffering, I won’t be hurt if instead of reading this, you put on that one viral video where the two elderly people can’t do the pie commercial without messing up.
every night is this pic from reddit now
In my brain, now more than ever, I sometimes feel like I’m negotiating with a very belligerent goblin. Like I have to, by hook or crook, take the time to somehow persuade the goblin that we should make breakfast before I’m able to actually go make breakfast. For about two weeks, I’ve been putting on Le Festin from the Ratatouille soundtrack just to make my steel cut oats, which allows me to evade the goblin entirely. I have run out of fruit, but I can’t convince the goblin that runs things in my brain to go to the grocery store. The goblin doesn’t want to, so we will have steel cut oats with only cinnamon until he can be coerced, tricked, or reasoned with.
I think I’m writing this essay less about the goblin and more about Le Festin. Go on, play it. It’s very nice. Yes, it’s the joke Tik Tok cooking song. It sounds palpably French and a little silly and jaunty. My brain is like “if I pour milk and water into a pot while this song is playing it’s going to be so freaking awesome” and I believe it so much that I can start the steel cut oats process and from there we are smooth sailing.
For context, I need to be going to the grocery store right fucking now. If I put it off any longer it’ll be 5PM and everyone else will be going to the grocery store, but I can’t go because I need to make a list. And I can’t make a list until I look at my cookbooks. Which I know will take a long time. And I didn’t go yesterday for these same reasons but I actually have to go today because my roommate and I have plans to make drinks, and I need to look up a good recipe for a Pimm’s Cup and buy the correct booze and fruits and I don’t even know what kind of booze Pimm’s is anyway. And furthermore, I love taking my sweet time in the grocery store and now I can’t and that hurts my feelings. I also live far, far too far away from a Trader Joe’s to go there and that also hurts my feelings. And I still haven’t made my list. Does anyone else have this problem? Is this not, in fact, a sincere VUBE entry, but instead a cry for help? No! It is not a cry for help! I will make my list!
Three hours have passed and I have made my list and gone to two grocery stores. You may not intuitively sense this about me, but I do not like the grocery store under normal circumstances. Something about the number of options, necessity of planning ahead, and my inability to cook causes me to come completely unglued. I admit, I did forget to get tofu. I did not get canned mango juice. I bought a star fruit because I panicked in the fruits. I did find Pimm’s, which Jewel didn’t have but Target did have, since, as I told my roommate, “I think that under the circumstances, we are allowed to use alcohol to cope. Just a little.”
y’all reading my sincere VUBE article
I went to the grocery store and as you all probably already know, the cashiers look like they’ve sincerely fucking had it and there’s almost no ice cream left and there’s an intercom that repeats that you need to stay at least six feet away from all other shoppers, but I don’t know how exactly we’re supposed to do that when the aisles are six feet and everyone and their mother is at the grocery store. So the grocery store is bad. This has always been true. But I did it! I won! And now I get to have a nice night with my roommate with Two Separate Kinds of Booze and I don’t have to go to the grocery store again for two whole weeks.
I don’t know why I’m writing so much about going to the grocery store when this sincere VUBE article is really about how I’m going to watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire and make mango habanero margaritas and Pimm’s cups. I think it’s about how one feels like the worst thing and one feels like the best thing, like my life now is just me switching the comedy and tragedy masks at random. I think I used to have more complex thoughts about my life, or hopes or dreams or something, but now it’s mostly ‘every day I must make breakfast, and then lunch, and then at some point I’ll stretch out this body I live in, text my friends and call my parents and that makes me happy, and maybe something terrible will happen, and then we will deal with it.’ I think this is an alright way to be living, all things considered.
Early on in the quarantine, perhaps day 2, my roommate and I jerry-rigged this 30 day goal tracker into a 30 activity sheet. One of the activities is make fancy drinks, which we’re doing tonight. We’ve already done have a vernal equinox ritual, read aloud, and go to the beach. We have two more go to the beach stickers left and as you know, the beaches are closed. I’m trying not to be maudlin about the beaches.
Frankey, my roommate, calls this “a personality pic”
We’re supposed to do papier-mâché soon, but we can’t seem to get our hands on newspapers and I forgot to look for them when I was at the store, so maybe next week. We have a running joke about whether or not there is room for something in our schedule. When I have chats planned with my friends, I call it ‘my packed social calendar.’
At some point, I’m going to shave my head because my hair is getting stupider and stupider. We’re going to do stick and pokes (don’t google that dad). We’re going to watch all the Harry Potter movies in a row. We’re going to learn a song together on the piano. We have three stickers that say craft, three that say bike ride, three that say read aloud. When we were making the list, we got sad because we wanted to put something on it like bowling, but you can’t go bowling. I’m feeling a little bit maudlin about bowling. I’m taking it day by day. Today I went to the grocery store and it was terrible, but now I have two boxes of blueberries.
I made a phone note of intentions back when we first burrowed underground and become the people of the dirt. They’re not very difficult intentions. Every day, I’m supposed to try and do something active, something creative, something social, and something productive. I can do this! These are the good things and they make my brain happy! I meant it when I said that taking care of myself often feels like reasoning with a belligerent goblin.
image by tumblr user @grelliam
I’m not going to even try to tell you what you should be doing right now. Likely, you have a pretty good idea of what is good for you to do and what you desire to do and somewhere in the middle there’s what you’re able to do and sometimes you can stay in bed on Instagram until 11:30 but maybe only on Sundays as a treat.
If you’re the type of person who goes just totally ape shit over a spreadsheet on colorful paper may I cordially recommend fabulous zinester Anna Jo Beck’s Habit Tracking Zine which provides an ideologically similar but slightly different activity experience
Everyone I know is finding something small and joyful to do. People are making pickles. All my friends are baking their favorite cultural nostalgia breads. I’ve been reading Moomin stories out loud to my mom. I took my first city bike ride and it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. I’ve started calling all my friends. I walk around my neighborhood with my roommate and we point out all the very cute houses we want to live in. Everyone is sharing poems now. I still hate the grocery store and if I get Coronavirus while going to the grocery store I am going to be more mad than you could possibly believe.
Anyway. This is the sincere VUBE post. If you would humor me, I want you to make a list of thirty fun things that you can be excited about. They should be things you can do alone, or with your roommate or while videochatting with your friends. You can do the activities slowly, at your leisure. Find some room for them in your packed social calendar. Maybe make a chart. There should be stickers. You should use colorful pens, if you have them. There should be a variety of things. Maybe some creative things, some active things, some productive things and some social things, like making a fancy dinner or watching your friends’ favorite movies with them. Not things you need to do, but nice things. It’s sad that there can’t be bowling. I know, it’s sad. Maybe the idea of doing apartment bowling would cheer you up, but it just made me sadder.
I want you to make the list of thirty things because I don’t know what to be excited about anymore, except that I’m excited that my roommate and I are going to make Pimm’s cups and margaritas and watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and afterwards we get to put the big fancy drinks sticker on our sheet and pick what we’re going to do next. I want these kinds of experiences for all of you. I want us to all find something to be excited about every day, like breakfast, or stretching, or painting. It doesn’t have to be an important thing.
Next week, we’re going to do papier-mâché and I’m going to make a big, big head and put it somewhere in our house, and then we’ll get to look at it every day, because we’re here all the time now. Tomorrow I think we’re going to sit in someone’s bed and watch all the Harry Potters in a row. Maybe next week, I’ll order us a new poetry book and we can read the poems to each other.
I’m scared and exhausted every day, but I’ll tell you some nice things. I just bought twenty dollars of mangos at Jewel today and I’m going to make so much mango lassi. My orchid stem that hasn’t bloomed since last year is beginning to bud again. There’s a trampoline in the basement of our building. I don’t know whose it is, but one of these days, when the urge strikes me, I’m going to drag it out and jump on it.
Thanks again for subscribing to VUBE, your support warms our hearts and helps ensure that we’re able to keep our lights on and our employees paid. If you’re jonesing for other ways to support Uncharted “Awesome” Books, check out our glorious selection of online offerings on our square site. In addition to the usual repertoire of alluring rare books listed on our website, you can now order new books from us and have them shipped straight to your house.
We also have what some decor & fashion experts are calling “extremely good merch,” gift cards, mystery bags, and the option to shop virtually! All very cool!